


White Flags Are Hoisted

by tjstar



Category: Twenty One Pilots
Genre: Childhood Trauma, Early Days, Eating Disorders, Emetophilia, First Kiss, Force-Feeding, M/M, Mentions of Masturbation, Past Child Abuse, Regional At Best Era, Self-Acceptance, Van Days, Vomiting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-11
Updated: 2018-05-11
Packaged: 2019-05-04 01:38:34
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,197
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14582100
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tjstar/pseuds/tjstar
Summary: The drain is still unclean.There’s a light shade of yellow in the corner of Tyler’s mouth.“I thought I was stronger.”“You’re strong,” Josh says. “You don’t have to do it.”





	White Flags Are Hoisted

“Just throw up and call it a night.”

It’s better for the ordeal to be over quickly; Josh is about to repeat it over and over again.

Those fan-made cookies they’ve had two hours ago have definitely been cursed _for Tyler_ — the rest of the crew hasn’t found them inedible. Giving advice doesn’t help, their zigzag route is not a remedy either; Tyler’s shoulder blades hit the back of his seat, his Adam’s apple bobs up and down with each gulp merged into a slight groan. The van jerks and turns, and Josh has no desire to be the _target_ when an inevitable thing happens. He holds a half finished bag of Doritos on his lap that is not an option.

“If you’re gonna puke, grab a KFC bucket and don’t you dare ruin my cameras; the lenses are more expensive than your ass.”

Mark isn’t mean, no, he’s just so well-prepared for travelling with the band.

Josh isn’t that tough.

“Really, dude, is it a stomach bug or something worse? Like, appendicitis?”

Tyler stares at the window with a pent-up panic in his eyes but keeps silent. Instead, he stretches on the seat so his runny nose pokes Josh’s neck; Josh fights the urge to pull away instantly, because really — stomach infections never warn anyone.

Josh feels like an epidemiologist trying to find the solution.

“How could the food poisoning kick in this soon?”

Tyler looks like a _contagious_ examinee.  

“Banana.”

“What do you mean?”

“I hate it. Haven’t eaten any since I turned fourteen,” Tyler stammers out. His head gets heavier against Josh’s shoulder. “I can identify it even when there’s a single crumb in the cookie.”

Tyler is a weirdo.

Josh keeps eating, Doritos crunch way too loudly, their corn-made bones are breaking.

“You’re nuts,” Michael says. He’s driving, he’s always assuring them that he likes it; a guy who fishes Tyler out of the crowd during every show can’t lie.

Tyler’s struggling with inner forces that make him lick his lips as he emerges out of his current drowsy state with obvious intentions. Josh is about to shout at Michael to pull over, about to kick their bags on the floor out of Tyler’s reach. He’s searching for that paper bucket, ignoring Tyler’s puffed cheeks when the bag of chips is being snatched out of his hands; Tyler’s green around the gills as he heaves and loses it, retching and spitting into the bag.

The van stops immediately, Michael turns around while Mark goggles at them from the opposite seat.

Tyler vomits two more times after a second break, back hunched and legs splayed out while he clutches the bag between his knees. Josh pats his spine, his t-shirt is disgustingly sweaty; the scent of Doritos is now mixed with the odor of Tyler’s gastric acid. He finishes, spewing out chaotic breaths and gripping at the bag, almost tying a knot on it.

It doesn’t smell like banana.

Mark tosses a water bottle at Tyler, but Josh catches it.

“We need a new air-fresher,” Tyler chokes up.

Josh unscrews the cap.

They have a show tomorrow and Tyler has never been _this_ real.

 

***

If the first time was an accident, the second time it happens Josh declares Tyler _obsessed_. It’s their day off, and there’s a banana peel in the trashcan, a gurgling of the toilet being flushed and a red-eyed Tyler who looks slightly high as he leaves the bathroom.

“Hey, Josh.”

“Hey.”

Tyler’s hair is wet, the stench of bile neutralized by shampoo and mint.

“Wanna play videogames?”

As if nothing happened. As if Tyler’s voice has gotten raspy all of the sudden.

“What’s going on?” Josh stomps his foot like a kid. His anger is not intimidating. “Is it your new diet?”

“No.”

Tyler has never been into purging.

Eating disorder is something that never happens _to your friends_.

Tyler and the wall can’t apparently stand apart from each other.

 

***

Josh would have waved their issue away if Tyler hadn’t decided to spend all of their days off like this. Strangled up cough and violent thuds against the walls are loud enough to crack Josh’s mind as he jerks awake in the middle of the night. He checks the trashcan habitually — there are two banana peels this time plus an empty bag of banana chips. The water in the shower is running, and Josh is running, too; he’s at the bathroom door when he hears gagging again.

“Tyler?”

Josh neglects the rule of knocking first and slams his shoulder into the door, crashing the latch, but Tyler is good at shielding his solitude. He stands behind the curtain, his silhouette looks so Laura Palmer-like wrapped in cellophane.

“Tyler?!”

Josh doesn’t wait for him to gather his thoughts, ripping the curtain open. The droplets of water sprinkling Josh’s face are cold, Tyler’s lips are blue, and there’s a bland yellow vomit by his curled toes. Some of it is smeared down the wall, Tyler directs a shower jet to it; the mush mostly dissolves, but little pieces of undigested food clog up the drain.

“I took antiemetic pills,” Tyler says.

His eyes are hollow when Josh turns the water off; Tyler slides his back down the tile, holding his hands between his thighs and sticking his knees together as he lands on the floor. Josh catches him, but there’s a smack of a naked body against the wet surface, Tyler sits still. Josh plucks a towel off the rack and throws it over Tyler’s shoulders.

His pills didn’t work.

Shower cabin smells like stale water.

“Why are you doing this? Think about your voice, your teeth. It’s not healthy.”

Josh speaks suavely, sitting next to Tyler on the cold floor; his underwear gets soaked in the water splashed out of the cabin. Josh shivers — Tyler has turned the room to a shock freezer.

“I’m trying to fight it. My head’s weak.”

Tyler’s palms are still pressed tightly to his crotch, and Josh is terrified of being turned on by this move. By this scent. By this taste if he licks the inside of Tyler’s mouth right now.

Josh pulls his knees to his chest.

“You’re not weak.”

Tyler’s nervous chuckle gets lost in the dribbling of water oozing from the tap. It’s like a rain.

“I was five,” Tyler sniffles. “Just five, you know? When you’re a mother of three kids with the fourth one inside of you, you get angry sometimes.”

Josh huddles closer to him to get some warmth from the towel, the space of a bathroom lurches.

“What are you talking about?”

Tyler’s speech is a record produced by his brain.

“I was eating banana oatmeal, I was a slow eater, and, you know, there were cartoons on TV, we had that crappy TV in the kitchen, and I usually liked eating there, but… My Mom, she was _tired_ , Zack and Maddy didn’t stop crying, and Jay didn’t stop kicking her, I don’t know. She came to me, she started yelling that I’m only picking at my food, and that I’m a big boy so I have to eat faster,” Tyler tugs the towel up to his neck. “And she grabbed my spoon, I was using a metal one like _a big boy_ , right? And she started shoving that oatmeal into my mouth, I didn’t like it, it hurt and I clenched my teeth, but one of them was sitting loose in my gum. Growing up, we all lose something, and I thought I’d give my tooth to a fairy. And my mother had just _knocked it out_ , and I wept and swallowed it along with oatmeal, with banana, with blood. I threw up a second later; it got on the table, on my romper, on my Mom. I begged her to let me go; my mouth felt _so_ empty, but do you think she stopped?”

Tyler answers his own question fulminantly.

“No. She had only gotten madder, she kept force-feeding me until she knocked out the tooth that was still sitting _tightly_ , it scraped my throat on the way back. I will never forget this taste. And my mother’s eyes. She then sobbed, she washed me in the sink and gave me an ice-cream. She wanted to bribe me so she asked me not to tell my Dad what happened. And I didn’t tell him the truth — he still keeps them in the box as a reminder that _‘little Tyler fell off his little bike and lost his pretty little teethies’_. It’s his favorite story.”

Tyler’s lips are still blue-countered although the room gets a little warmer. Josh’s dizziness increases.

“Years later, she kept giving me bananas before my basketball practices, but each time I tried to force it into my mouth I was ending up with my face in the toilet. I started lying so I could get to school early and give my shitty meal to somebody.”

Tyler’s childhood memories are so horrible Josh has no words to fix it; he stays a silent listener, cursing himself for not being a support for a kid-Tyler or a teenage-Tyler. Josh hadn’t even met him back then.

“My Dad has lactose intolerance, but she never forced him to drink milk. But she was force-feeding me bananas from five to fourteen, twice a week, and I once puked during the game but we won anyway.”

Hot bitterness coats the back of Josh’s tongue so he shuts up as soon as he opens his mouth.

“So… you’re eating it to battle it?”

“It’s _in my brain_ , Josh. It’s not an allergy, not my weak stomach — it’s all about blood and barf. About banana glue that is so smooth coming back up. I want to be normal, right?”

Josh understands him.

He dives into Tyler’s story, he _feels_ every word; Josh remembers his own childhood, remembers banned CDs and forbidden themes. Remembers getting back home through the window at 4 a.m. only to be met by his parents watching crime report and calling local hospitals and morgues. But his parents have never made him bleed, never _physically_ abused him.

The drain is still unclean.

There’s a light shade of yellow in the corner of Tyler’s mouth.

“I thought I was stronger.”

“You’re strong,” Josh says. “You don’t have to do it.”

Tyler’s ass is probably numb from sitting on the tile for this long. Josh’s boxers are damp, he’s too ashamed to get up right now, because the sight of an _exposed_ Tyler has done a nasty thing.

But there’s the vomit.

But Josh is hard.

Josh doesn’t want Tyler to label him as a freak who gets horny at the sight of naked people puking their guts out.

“You have to stop doing this. It’s important.”

“Yeah. I know.”

Tyler crosses his legs instead of crossing his fingers.

Both of them are covering their groins for different reasons.

 

***

Playing at small venues is not fun, because Tyler can almost reach for the ceiling standing on his piano like a haunted mannequin. Josh can’t backflip properly so he just rolls over his head off the piano that looks ridiculous rather cool.

Working hard is easy when you have a _dream job_.

Josh bangs the cymbals until he feels like they would bend, crashed by his unstoppable powers, which means _enough_ ; Tyler tries to dance with enough passion for haters to say that _this freak is having seizures again_ while their fans yell their songs like unsteady, twisted choir. Tyler leaps onto the drumset platform, face to face with Josh as if he’s begging for help — but their interaction is not even a part of the show. Tyler’s fake smile indicates his pain — Josh is aware of a yellow peel rotting backstage, he’s aware of a crumpled pack of BanApple Capri-Sun and banana biscuits.

If Tyler is a true masochist, it’s his starter-pack then.

They play _Slowtown_ when Tyler begins to sweat more than he should, when his chest jerks more than it should; he skips the lines in the rapping part and stoops down next to his piano before catching his breath and continuing.

“But I do not look up anymore and I don’t… Know… Why.”

The bustle and the metronome in Josh’s ear muffle the words; he’s deaf, but beating the crap out of his drums is the best way to clear his head.

And Tyler doesn’t look up just like the lyrics of _their_ song say —

Backstage hallway is right next to Josh and his drumset; there’s a black curtain two steps away, there’s Mark and his camera, and Tyler is about to break the lens, shoving Mark aside, clamping his lips with one hand and throwing his keytar behind his back with the other. Josh drums in rhythm with the playback while Tyler doubles over, and his vomit splashes onto the floor like a lava out of an erupting volcano. Josh turns his head to check if Tyler can keep on singing.

Tyler waves his hand and nods.

_Do your job. Perform your task._

Worried faces in the audience are distracting.      

Tyler returns with a tornado-like expression, bouncing on one leg.

A crew member mops the floor operatively; other people might think Tyler is drunk or stoned or is just coming down with Ebola or with anything their spleeny minds would prompt.

Josh would tell them that Tyler is _infected_ , because who isn’t?

Tyler’s voice is all scratchy during _Ruby_ , he doesn’t hit the notes right, the melody sounds darkly tragic, distorted even. Tyler coughs into his fist after screaming out _‘tell our Dad I’m sorry’_ — because he is _indeed_ sorry — and takes one more trip backstage, now blowing chunks into a small plastic bucket placed on the scaffolding ladder. A forced pause turns to Josh’s unplanned drum-solo; he’s a desperate loner while Tyler talks to people surrounding him. Just like vultures would surround a victim. When they offer him something, he shakes his head and joins Josh onstage.

“How is everyone doing tonight?”

Josh is doing awful.

Tyler is so dramatically cheerful.

There are plenty of other things to do.

Josh gets struck by Tyler’s manner of holding his mic — letting it sway, his thumb and his forefinger are wrapped tightly around a silvery grille — it resembles an extremely _graceful_ masturbation-like move. In Josh’s imagination, Tyler’s clammy palm’s sliding up and down his erect dick at the same pace. There’s the heat in Josh’s chest, in his pants too, and no, _he’s not going_ to fantasize of it when the show ends. He adjusts his headband holding up his hair and wishes he could pull a ski mask on.

Josh is flushed.

Tyler holds the keys to the show.

They don’t cancel the rest of their performance, they _can’t_ , but Tyler keeps swallowing the words along with his recurrent sickness. His skin is blotchy, mottled with both paleness and blush, and he has to clench his teeth when he looks over his shoulder. He’s a wreck, but it doesn’t stop them from finishing — they even go through the dual drumming successfully. They do their bows, the crowd chants the band’s name and pleads for encore, and Josh has no desire to figure out if at least one uncommonly sneaky viewer managed to see or _film_ what Tyler was doing while _missing_.

Distress might cause another onslaught. Unfortunately.

“You’re a real rock star now, congrats,” Mark holds the bucket up while Tyler dry heaves over it. “Stay hydrated, dude.”

Tyler nods and props himself up against the wall with his eyes closed. Josh pulls the curtain to protect themselves from curious eyes and inappropriate questions. Tyler doesn’t have a place to hide, but he’s skulking, slipping into his hoodie and zipping it up until the fly bites his chin. Josh stands past him, shaking him by the shoulder.

“Tyler?”

“Don’t say anything. I’ve ruined the show —”

Josh can’t _deny_ it, he can only soften the punch.

“It’s okay,” Josh cracks his knuckles to make his words more valid. “You accept it, and — I don’t know, I feel queasy when I see the blood, but I don’t hurt myself to get used to the sight of it.”

Tyler rubs his stomach underneath sweaty layers of his clothing.

“Yeah. Hurting yourself never works.”

Josh can’t comprehend what he exactly means. He hates _yellow_.

“Stop torturing yourself.”

“It’s a psychological problem. ”

“Go to therapist then.”

“I don’t wanna start it over again.”

If it’s all about rubber bands Tyler is wearing from time to time Josh can guess why.

“You don’t have to.”

“I just thought that the show was more important to me, and the music would distract me. And I failed.”

And Josh’s thoughts turn to a dinging void, there’s nothing that he can say — it’s like a psychological block — he’s now bound to live with Tyler’s childhood trauma, he’s bound to care, to share.

Caring and sharing is not a cure.

There’s _no_ cure.

There’s no light in their corner, and the floor is still wet at the area where Tyler’s vomit once was; Josh doesn’t want to stay there, it’s hideous, the soles of his sneakers are sticking to laminate. It’s just a way to escape the trap — one more step, more smell, more anxious dreams; the moment of privacy is overextended, and the laces in Tyler’s hoodie are just slimy worms when they tangle over Josh’s fingers.

“It wasn’t your fault.”

Tyler stinks, refusing to breathe and wiping his lips on the cuff of his sleeve way too frequently.

“It was.”

He’s turning away, he’s leaving, but the chain of unlucky events wraps around Josh’s throat. His teeth clank against Tyler’s, checking and counting them; he’s stained with Tyler’s sweat, his saliva, and this is the most grossing out thing he’s ever done, but he can’t resist a lustful urge when Tyler is so helpless and so _real_ again. Josh rams him into scaffolding behind them; Tyler hisses and gnaws at Josh’s lip, almost piercing it once again.

Pinned, pressed, perplexed, he’s probably taking it like another punishment — from Josh this time — Josh licks over his slobbery teeth, Tyler hums when the tip of Josh’s tongue pokes a barely healed sore in his mouth.

Josh should’ve known.

Tyler’s inner cheeks are covered with foul-tasting membranes, his tongue is scabrous and the flavor is sour; Josh’s guts jolt, but he handles it, it’s not that bad. It’s just Tyler’s odd personality.

He should’ve done it in the shower while Tyler was talking about his mother.

Tyler snorts; Josh is not squeamish, but getting more vomit into his mouth would have been way too much so he pulls away first.

“You taste like _banana_ ,” he says.

And Tyler replies —

“You taste like Josh Dun.”

Josh doesn’t buy it.

“Do you have more biscuits?”

Tyler rolls his eyes.

“Yes.”

“Good. Now I know what I’m gonna have for dinner.”

 _I’m not sharing them with you_ , he could’ve added. Instead, he gives Tyler a pack of mint gum; Tyler is more _alive_ than a minute ago.

“Do you think I have a chance to make myself _less_ dirty?”

“Yes,” Josh jerks his head. “We’re gonna work on it.”

**Author's Note:**

> this was bound to happen


End file.
